Thanks for the reply! Which wonder would you consider to be worst in 4P, since thats the current arena and we all have been playing it a lot? My personal list has Olympia in clear last place by a large margin, then Alexandria second worse but close to Ephesos, 3rd worst. Both of those I'm happy to play and can do some unique powerful things in the right circumstances, and I don't consider them far behind the others.
Olympia's abilities let you play cards for free, but 4p has the most abundant brown resources of any number of players because of the age 2 glut of doubles. Its reasonably frequent to get "stuck" playing extra brown resources at the end of age 2 even. This is especially bad for Olympia side B: The last wonder stage requires all 3 greys... but if you have all 3 greys, then the 1st and 2cd abilities are almost certainly worthless (and the second ability is nearly always worthless anyways).
Side A is not as bad because it can go heavy brown/military and try to use its middle ability to get a blue and purple in age 3. But that is a singular path to victory which requires both good card order (either/or browns in age 1 are key but very competitive) and a good guild coming around, and NOT playing blues in age 2 can be a big restriction at times. At absolute best, this ability saves ~12 coins in age 2 (3 greys for palace/pantheon, 3 resources on one of the big guilds): thats pretty good! But it barely ever happens because other players are also gunning for those same cards. A middle ability that in very specific cases gives a decent benefit, but often gives 0 benefit at all, is just plain worse than a consistent 9 coins ala Ephesos A, or 5 points like Gizah, or extra military, or etc etc.
There are also options to just not play wonder cards at all, or only play Side B first card, which is probably the best of all of Olympia's abilities. But this leaves the wonder uniquely vulnerable to "dead" hands last age, and also uniquely bad at countering science because it cannot bury science under its wonder. It is possible to win "without" a wonder, and brick is not the worst starting resource as it unlocks the repeated age 1 military 4P, but its a significant disadvantage that relies on no dead hands to be viable.
Not to say Olympia can't win: it totally can, with the right card order and/or opponent mistakes. But its an uphill battle.
